‘It's time to put the copes down and get to work’: a qualitative study of incel exit strategies on r/IncelExit

ABSTRACTIncels, the now-widely notorious community of involuntary celibate individuals, represent an emergent online subculture predominantly composed of young men who are dissatisfied with their inability to experience romance or become involved in sexual relationships with women regardless of their desire in doing so. Despite incels being commonly portrayed as upholding a fatalistic and inescapable ideology that promotes networked misogyny and violence, there exists a unique online Reddit forum called r/IncelExit that aims to support self-identifying incels who are considering leaving inceldom. By thematically analyzing the top 25 most-engaged forums on r/IncelExit, this research highlights how online community support can be mobilized to encourage, share, teach, and sustain concrete exit strategies for incels who want to move away from incel rhetoric and disengage from incel communities. Findings illustrate various avenues for exiting inceldom that together focus on working towards self-improvement, community involvement, and disruption of incel rhetoric – efforts that are sustained by the r/IncelExit community’s continued motivation and encouragement. Implications for countering violent extremism (CVE) approaches are provided. Seeing as most CVE approaches focus on education programs, psychosocial mediation, or criminal justice interventions, this research highlights a complementary CVE measure grounded in mutual aid, peer support, and inner-group collaborative encouragement.KEYWORDS: Incelsinvoluntary celibacyIncelExitdisengagementmutual aidcountering violent extremism AcknowledgementThe authors would like to thank the editor and reviewers of this journal for their insightful comments and for supporting this work.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsRuxandra Mihaela GheorgheRuxandra Mihaela Gheorghe, MA, MSW, is a social worker and doctoral candidate at Carleton University's School of Social Work, Ottawa, Canada. Her current research is concerned with articulations of toxic masculinity in direct therapeutic practice.David Yuzva ClementDavid Yuzva Clement, PhD, is an adjunct research professor at Carleton University's School of Social Work, Ottawa, Canada. He is also an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT).